英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

abet: abet: see bait
accretion: accretion: see crescent
aesthetic: aesthetic: [18] In strict etymological terms, aesthetic relates to perception via the senses. It comes ultimately from the Greek verb aísthesthai ‘perceive’ (which is related to Latin audīre ‘hear’), and this meaning is preserved in anaesthetic, literally ‘without feeling’. The derived adjective aisthētikós reached Western Europe via modern Latin aesthēticus, and was first used (in its Germanized form ästhetisch) in the writings of the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804).

Here, it retained its original sense, ‘perceptual’, but its use by A T Baumgarten as the title (Æsthetica) of a work on the theory of beauty in art (1750) soon led to its adoption in its now generally accepted meaning.
=> audible, audition
alphabet: alphabet: [15] This word is based on the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta, standing for the whole. It derives from Greek alphabētos, via Latin alphabētum. When it first came into English, purists tried to insist that it should be reserved for the Greek alphabet, and that the English alphabet should be referred to by the term ABC (which had been lexicalized in various forms, such as abece, apece, and absee, since the late 13th century), but, like most such prescriptive demands, this was a waste of breath and ink.
amethyst: amethyst: [13] The amethyst gets its name from a supposition in the ancient world that it was capable of preventing drunkenness. The Greek word for ‘intoxicate’ was methúskein, which was based ultimately on the noun methú ‘wine’ (source of English methyl, and related to English mead). The addition of the negative prefix a- ‘not’ produced the adjective améthustos, used in the phrase líthos améthustos ‘anti-intoxicant stone’. This was borrowed as a noun into Latin (amethystus), and ultimately into Old French as ametiste. English took it over and in the 16th century re-introduced the -th- spelling of the Latin word.
=> mead, methyl
appetite: appetite: [14] In its origins, appetite referred to a very generalized desire or inclination; the wish for food is a secondary development. The Latin noun was appetītus, a derivative of the compound verb appetere ‘strive after, desire eagerly’, which was based on petere ‘go to, seek out’ (source also of English compete, impetus, petition, and repeat, and related to feather).
=> compete, impetus, petition, repeat
archetype: archetype: [17] Archetype comes, via Latin archetypum, from Greek arkhétupon, a nominal use of the adjective arkhétupos, literally ‘firstmoulded’, from túpos ‘mould, model, type’. The Greek prefix arkhe- was based on the noun arkhos ‘chief, ruler’, a derivative of the verb arkhein ‘begin, rule’ (see ARCHIVES). It first entered our language (via Latin archi-) in the Old English period, as arce- (archbishop was an early compound formed with it); and it was reborrowed in the Middle English period from Old French arche-.

Its use has gradually extended from ‘highest in status’ and ‘first of its kind’ to ‘the ultimate – and usually the worst – of its kind’, as in archcraitor. Its negative connotations lie behind its eventual development, in the 17th century, into an independent adjective, first as ‘cunning, crafty’, later as ‘saucy, mischievous’. The same Greek root has provided English with the suffixes -arch and -archy (as in monarch, oligarchy); but here the original meaning of ‘ruling’ has been preserved much more stably.
=> archaic, archives
arithmetic: arithmetic: see algorithm
asset: asset: [16] Originally, to have assets was simply to have ‘enough’ – as in French assez. The Anglo-Norman legal phrase aver asetz signified ‘have enough money to meet one’s debts’, and eventually asetz, later assets, passed from the general meaning ‘enough’ to the particular ‘financial resources’ (the final -s caused it to be regarded as a plural noun, but the analogical singular asset does not appear until the 19th century).

Anglo-Norman asetz itself goes back via Old French asez to Vulgar Latin *assatis, formed from the Latin phrase ad satis ‘to enough’ (satis is the source of English satisfy and satiate, and is related to sad).
=> sad, satiate, satisfy
athlete: athlete: [18] The etymological idea underlying athlete is ‘competing for a prize’. Greek āthlon meant ‘award, prize’, whence the verb athlein ‘compete for a prize’. Derived from this was the noun athlētés ‘competitor’. The context in which the word was most commonly used in Greek was that of the public games, where competitors took part in races, boxing matches, etc. Hence the gradual narrowing down of the meaning of athlete to ‘one who takes part in sports involving physical exercise’, and even further to ‘participant in track and field events’.
ballet: ballet: [17] Etymologically, a ballet is a ‘little dance’. English acquired the word, via French ballet, from Italian balletto, a diminutive of ballo ‘dance’, related to English ball (the diminutive of Italian balla ‘spherical ball’ is ballotta, whence English ballot). The noun ballo came from the verb ballare (a descendant via late Latin ballāre of Greek ballízein ‘dance’), of which another derivative was ballerino ‘dancing master’.

The feminine form, ballerina, entered English in the late 18th century. Balletomane ‘ballet enthusiast’ is a creation of the 1930s. Another word ballet, also a diminutive, exists, or at least existed, in English. It meant ‘little [spherical] ball’, and was used in the 18th century as a technical term in heraldry.
=> ball
basket: basket: [13] Basket is something of a mystery word. It turns up in the 13th century in Old French and Anglo-Norman as basket and in Anglo-Latin as baskettum, but how it got there is far from clear. Some have suggested that Latin bascauda ‘washing tub’, said by the Roman writer Martial to be of British origin (and thought by some etymologists to be possibly of Celtic origin), may be connected with it in some way, but no conclusive proof of this has ever been found.
bassinette: bassinette: see basin
bayonet: bayonet: [17] Bayonet comes from French bayonette, an early spelling of what is now baïonette. The French term is traditionally derived from Bayonne, the name of a town and port on the southwest coast of France, near Biarritz, where bayonets were supposedly first used by Basques of the area, in the 17th century. But this etymology is not universally accepted, and some have noted the resemblance to Old French bayon ‘crossbow bolt’.
beetle: beetle: English has three separate words beetle. The commonest, beetle the insect, comes from Old English bitula, which was a derivative of the verb bītan ‘bite’: beetle hence means etymologically ‘the biter’. Beetle ‘hammer’, now largely restricted to various technical contexts, is also Old English: the earliest English form, bētel, goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *bautilaz, a derivative of the verb *bautan, from which English gets beat (the cognate Old Norse beytill meant ‘penis’).

The adjective beetle [14], as in ‘beetle brows’, and its related verb are of unknown origin, although it has been speculated that there is some connection with the tufted antennae of certain species of beetle, which may suggest eyebrows.
=> bite; beat
beret: beret: [19] The beret originated in the southwestern corner of France, worn by the farmers and peasants of Gascony, and the word for it comes from the south-western dialect term berret (it reached English via mainstream French béret). It derives from Latin birrus ‘hooded cloak’, which is probably of Celtic origin (Middle Irish berr ‘short’ has been compared), and is thus a relative of biretta [16], the term for the square cap worn by Roman Catholic clergy, formed as a diminutive of birrus in Italian (berretta) and Spanish (birreta).
=> biretta
bet: bet: [16] Since its comparatively late arrival, bet has ousted the earlier lay, wager, and game as the main term for ‘risking money on an uncertain outcome’ (gamble is later still). It is by no means clear where it came from; the usual explanation is that it is short for the noun abet, in the sense ‘instigation, encouragement, support’ – that is, one is giving one’s ‘support’ to that which one thinks, or hopes, may happen in the future (abet itself comes from the Old French verb abeter, and is related to English bait).

It first appears in Robert Greene’s Art of Cony Catching 1592, which suggests an origin in the argot of smalltime Elizabethan criminals.
=> abet, bait, bite
betray: betray: [13] Betray is an English formation based on the Old French verb traïr ‘betray’, which came from Latin tradere ‘hand over, deliver up’ (originally a compound formed from trans- ‘across’ and dāre ‘give’). The noun formed from tradere was trāditiō, from which English gets, directly, tradition, and indirectly, via Old French and Anglo-Norman, the appropriate treason.
=> tradition, treason
betroth: betroth: see true
between: between: [OE] The second syllable of between is related to two and twin; the word as a whole seems to represent an original phrase meaning something like ‘by two each’. Old English betwēonum reflects a Germanic *twēon, reduced from an earlier *twikhnai; this represents the base *twīkh- (from which we get two) plus an -n suffix with apparently some sort of distributive function. The related betwixt comes ultimately from Germanic *twa ‘two’ and the element *-isk- ‘-ish’.
=> twin, two
bouquet: bouquet: see bush
bracelet: bracelet: [15] The Latin word for ‘bracelet’ was bracchiāle, a derivative of bracchium ‘arm’ – thus, ‘something worn on or round the arm’. This passed into Old French as bracel, which made a brief and unconvincing appearance in English in the early 16th century. It was the French diminutive form, bracelet, which caught on in English. Its colloquial use as a term for ‘handcuffs’ goes back to the early 19th century.
bracket: bracket: [16] The word bracket appears to have come from medieval French braguette, which meant ‘codpiece’, a resemblance evidently having been perceived between the codpiece of a pair of men’s breeches and the ‘projecting architectural support’ which was the original meaning of bracket in English. Before the word even arrived in English, it had quite an eventful career.

The French word was a diminutive form of brague, which in the plural meant ‘breeches’. It was borrowed from Old Provençal braga, which got it from Latin brāca; Latin in turn acquired it from Gaulish brāca, but the Gaulish word seems ultimately to have been of Germanic origin, and to be related to English breeches.
=> breeches
brunette: brunette: see brown
bucket: bucket: [13] We first encounter bucket in the Anglo-Norman forms buket and buquet. It is not entirely clear where this came from, but it may be a derivative of Old English būc. The primary underlying sense of this was ‘something bulging or swelling’, and hence it meant not only ‘jug’ but also ‘belly’ (related are German bauch and Swedish buk ‘paunch’). It survived dialectally into modern English as bowk, meaning ‘milkpail’ and ‘large tub used in coal mines’. The bucket of ‘kick the bucket’ was originally a beam from from which slaughtered animals were hung; it is probably a separate word, from Old French buquet ‘balance’.
budget: budget: [15] Originally, a budget was a ‘pouch’. English got the word from Old French bougette, which was a diminutive form of bouge ‘leather bag’ (from which we get bulge). This came from Latin bulga, which may have been of Gaulish origin (medieval Irish bolg ‘bag’ has been compared). The word’s financial connotations arose in the 18th century, the original notion being that the government minister concerned with treasury affairs opened his budget, or wallet, to reveal what fiscal measures he had in mind.

The first reference to the expression occurs in a pamphlet called The budget opened 1733 directed against Sir Robert Walpole: ‘And how is this to be done? Why by an Alteration only of the present Method of collecting the publick Revenues … So then, out it comes at last. The Budget is opened; and our State Empirick hath dispensed his packets by his Zany Couriers through all parts of the Kingdom … I do not pretend to understand this Art of political Legerdemain’.

The earliest recorded use of the word non-satirically in this sense seems to be from 1764.
=> bulge
bullet: bullet: [16] Etymologically, a bullet is a ‘little ball’. It comes from French boulette, a diminutive form of boule ‘ball’, from which English also gets bowl, as in the game of bowls. It originally meant ‘cannon-ball’ as well as ‘rifle or pistol projectile’, but this sense had effectively died out by the mid-18th century.
=> bowl
bulletin: bulletin: [17] If a bullet is etymologically a ‘little ball’, a bulletin is a ‘little little edict’. It comes via French bulletin from Italian bulletino, which was a diminutive form of bulletta ‘document, voting slip’ (briefly introduced into English in the 17th century as bullet: ‘Elected by the Great Master and his Knights, who give their voices by bullets’, George Sandys, Travels 1615); French billet ‘letter’, and indeed English billet, as in ‘billeting’ soldiers on a house, are parallel formations on a variant of the root of bulletta.

And to return to bulletta, this was itself a diminutive form of bulla, from medieval Latin bulla ‘sealed document’, which is the source of English bull, as in ‘papal bull’.
=> billet, bull
cachet: cachet: [17] Cachet was a Scottish borrowing of a French word which originally meant ‘seal affixed to a letter or document’. In the 19th century this developed into the figurative ‘personal stamp, distinguishing characteristic’, which, through its use in the context of distinguished or fashionable people or things, has come to mean ‘prestige’. The original notion contained in the word is of ‘pressing’.

It comes via the medieval French verb cacher ‘press’ from Latin coactāre ‘constrain’. This was a derivative of coact-, the past participial stem of cōgere ‘drive together’ (source of English cogent), a compound verb formed from con- ‘together’ and agere ‘drive’ (source of English act and a host of other derivatives from agent to prodigal).

Modern French cacher means ‘hide’, which is the source of cache ‘hoard’, borrowed by English in the 19th century.
=> cache, cogent
cadet: cadet: [17] Etymologically, a cadet is a ‘little head’. Its original meaning in English was ‘younger son or brother’, and it came from French cadet, an alteration of a Gascon dialect term capdet ‘chief’. This in turn derived from Vulgar Latin *capitellus ‘little head’, a diminutive form of Latin caput ‘head’ (from which English also gets captain and chief).

The reason for its apparently rather strange change in meaning from ‘chief’ to ‘younger son’ seems to be that the younger sons of Gascon families were in former times sent to the French court to fulfil the role of officers. When English borrowed French cadet, it did so not only in a form that retained the original spelling, but also as caddie or cadee, which originally meant ‘young officer’.

The Scottish version, caddie, gradually developed in meaning over the centuries through ‘person who runs errands’ to, in the 19th century, ‘golfer’s assistant’. Cad, originally ‘unskilled assistant’ [18], is an abbreviation of caddie or cadee.
=> captain, chief
cafeteria: cafeteria: see coffee
carburettor: carburettor: [19] Carburettor is a derivative of carburet, an obsolete term for what is now known as carbide ‘a carbon compound’. It was originally used for a device for adding carbon to a gas for enhancing its power of illumination; the current application to a device for producing air/fuel vapour in an engine dates from the 1890s. Carburet itself was a later form of carbure, borrowed in the 1790s from French; its ultimate origin was in Latin carbō, source of English carbon.
=> carbon
carpet: carpet: [14] Originally, carpet was simply a sort of rough cloth, and medieval Latin carpīta, for example, was sometimes used for a garment made from it. In earliest English use it was a ‘table-cloth’ or ‘bed-spread’, and it was not until the 15th century that the specialized ‘floorcovering’ began to establish itself. The word itself entered English via either Old French carpite or medieval Latin carpīta, which was derived from carpīre, an alteration of Latin carpere ‘pluck’ (related to English harvest).

The underlying notion seems to be that such cloth was originally made from ‘plucked’ fabric, that is, fabric which had been unravelled or shredded.
castanet: castanet: [17] Castanets were originally named in Spanish from their resemblance to the shells of chestnuts, Spanish castañeta being a diminutive form of castaña ‘chestnut’, from Latin castanea (itself the ultimate source of English chestnut). Another name for them in 17th-century English was knackers: ‘Castinettas: knackers of the form of chestnuts, used to this day by the Spaniards in their dances’, Robert Stapylton, Juvenal’s sixteen satires 1647.
=> chestnut
cemetery: cemetery: [14] Not surprisingly for a word having associations with death, cemetery’s origins are euphemistic. It comes via late Latin coemētērium from Greek koimētérion, which originally meant ‘dormitory’ (it was a derivative of the verb koiman ‘put to sleep’); it was apparently early Greek Christian writers who first applied the word to burial grounds.
claret: claret: [14] Claret was originally a ‘lightcoloured wine’ – pale red (virtually what we would now call rosé), but also apparently yellowish. The word comes ultimately from Latin clārus ‘clear’; from this was derived the verb clārāre, whose past participle was used in the phrase vīnum clārātum ‘clarified wine’. This passed into Old French as vin claret.

Modern French clairet preserves the word’s early sense ‘pale wine, rosé’, but in English by the later 17th century seems to have been transferred to red wine, and since in those days the vast majority of red wine imported into Britain came from Southwest France, and Bordeaux in particular, it was not long before claret came to mean specifically ‘red Bordeaux’.
=> clear
comet: comet: [13] Comet means literally ‘the longhaired one’. Greek kómē meant ‘hair’, but it was also applied metaphorically to the tail of a comet, which was thought of as streaming out behind like a luxuriant head of hair being blown by the wind. Hence an astēr kométēs ‘longhaired star’ was the name given to a comet. Eventually the adjective kométēs came to stand for the whole phrase, and it passed via Latin comēta and Old French comete into English.
compete: compete: [17] Compete comes from Latin competere. This was a compound verb formed from com- ‘together’ and petere ‘seek, strive’ (source of English petition, appetite, impetus, and repeat). At first this meant ‘come together, agree, be fit or suitable’, and the last of these meanings was taken up in the present participial adjective competēns, source of English competent [14]. In later Latin, however, competere developed the sense ‘strive together’, and this formed the basis of English compete.
=> appetite, competent, impetus, petition, repeat
complete: complete: [14] Complete first reached English as an adjective, either via Old French complet or direct from Latin complētus. This was the past participle of complēre ‘fill up, finish’, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix com- and plēre ‘fill’, a word related to Latin plēnus ‘full’ (whence plenary, plenitude, plenty, etc) and indeed to English full.

The verb complēre itself came into Old French as the now obsolete complir (complete as a verb is a later formation from the adjective), and was prefixed with a- to produce accomplir. From its stem accompliss- English got accomplish [14].
=> accomplish, compliment, comply, expletive, plenary, plenty
concrete: concrete: [14] In origin, something concrete is something that has ‘grown together’. The word comes, via Old French concret, from Latin concrētus, the past participle of concrēscere ‘grow together’, hence ‘harden’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and crēscere ‘grow’ (source also of English crescent, increase, and accrue). Its original application in English was fairly general – referring to that which is solid or material; its use for the building material did not emerge until the early 19th century.
=> accrue, crescent, decrease, increase
confetti: confetti: [19] The Latin compound verb conficere meant ‘put together, make, prepare’ (it was formed from the prefix com- and facere ‘do, make’, source of English fact, factory, fashion, etc and related to English do). From its past participial stem was formed the noun confectiō, which passed into English, via Old French, as confection in the 14th century (by which time it already had its present-day association with sweets).

But the past participle confectum also produced Old French confit, whence English comfit [15], and Italian confetto, which was a small sweet traditionally thrown during carnivals. The British adapted the missiles to weddings (displacing the traditional rice) at the end of the 19th century, using symbolic shreds of coloured paper rather than real sweets.
=> comfit, confection, discomfit, do, fact, factory, fashion
corset: corset: see corpse
cosset: cosset: [17] Cosset may originally have meant ‘someone who lives in a cottage’. Old English had a word cotsǣta ‘cottager’, which was formed from cot ‘cottage’ and *sǣt-, an element related to the verb sit. This disappeared from the language after the Old English period, but not before it was adopted into Anglo-Norman as cozet or coscet (forms which appear in Domesday Book).

It has been suggested that this is the same word as turns up in local dialects from the 16th century meaning ‘lamb reared by hand, pet lamb’ (that is, a lamb kept by a cottager rather than at liberty with the flock), and further that the notion of pampering a pet lamb gave rise to the verb cosset.
covet: covet: [13] Covetousness and cupidity are very closely related, etymologically as well as semantically. Covet comes via Old French coveitier from Vulgar Latin *cupiditāre, a verb derived from the Latin noun cupiditās (from which English gets cupidity). Its ultimate source is the Latin verb cupere ‘desire’.
=> cupidity
cresset: cresset: see grease
cretin: cretin: [18] In the Swiss-French dialect of the high Alps the term creitin or crestin (their version of christian) was applied to people suffering from mental handicap and stunted growth – the notion being to emphasize that despite their abnormalities, such people were nevertheless as much human beings as any other ‘Christian’. The word was adopted (via French crétin) as a clinical term for someone suffering from dwarfism and mental retardation as a result of a congenital thyroid deficiency, and was subsequently broadened out, towards the end of the 19th century, as a general disparaging term for a ‘fool’.
=> christian
cricket: cricket: English has two completely unrelated words cricket. The name of the small grasshopper-like insect [14] comes from Old French criquet, a derivative of the verb criquer ‘click, creak’, which no doubt originated as an imitation of the sound itself. The origins of the name of the game cricket [16] have never been satisfactorily explained. One explanation often advanced is that it comes from Old French criquet ‘stick’, or its possible source, Flemish krick, although it is not clear whether the original reference may have been to the stick at which the ball was aimed (the forerunner of the modern stumps) or to the stick, or bat, used to hit the ball.

Another possible candidate is Flemish krickstoel, a long low stool with a shape reminiscent of the early types of wicket.
croquet: croquet: [19] Old Norse krókr ‘hook’ (source of English crook) was borrowed into Old French as croc. This formed the basis of a diminutive, crochet, literally ‘little hook’, which has passed into English in various guises over the centuries. First to arrive was crotchet [14], applied to musical notes from their hooked shape. Crocket ‘curling ornamental device’ followed in the 17th century, via the Old Northern French variant croquet. Crochet itself, in the ‘knitting’ sense, arrived in the 19th century.

And in the mid 19th century croquet, apparently a dialectal variant of French crochet, was applied to the lawn game with balls and mallets newly introduced from Ireland to Britain. Old French croc was also the ancestor of encroach.
=> crook, crotchet, encroach, lacrosse
crotchet: crotchet: see croquet
cruet: cruet: see crock